


Sketchbook

by LHS3020b



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LHS3020b/pseuds/LHS3020b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war's end, a damaged SSV <i>Normandy</i> limps back to Sol. An evacuation is necessary. Garrus and James search the ship for any stragglers. When they get to Shepard's former cabin, they find something they didn't expect, and they learn some things they didn't know about their former commander...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sketchbook

The _Normandy_ was silent.  
Garrus was in the crew deck, not far from the medical bay. He was floating a few inches above the floor, with one hand clamped firmly around a convenient piece of pipework. It hung down from the ceiling, where a panel had been dislodged during the crash. The turian was weightless. With the reactor dead and the power off, there was no gravity. The only light in the room came from the lamp on his helmet. As he turned his head, the beam swept over the still, dark space. He caught a glimpse of a vast shadow, moving over the kitchen wall. For a moment he tensed.  
Then he realised it was only a mug, abandoned and drifting.  
He looked behind him. There was the mess table, and its associated chairs. They were still in place - their fittings were bolted to the deck. Garrus remembered it as it had been, in the glow of the orange overhead lights, surrounded with the chatter of conversation, people chomping down quick meals between missions.  
He knew those days were gone.  
With an involuntary twitch, his mandibles flexed. He took a deep breath, hearing the sound rattle inside the tight confines of his helmet. With the reactor cold and almost all the crew now aboard the _Indigo_ , the silence was unnerving. It felt like he was trespassing at a cemetery.  
‘Sad to see the old girl like this,’ he said aloud.  
A voice crackled in his earphones. ‘You talking to yourself or the ship?’  
Garrus was reminded that he was not alone. ‘Just wanted to make sure you were awake, James. Couldn't have you falling asleep now, could I?’  
Over by the elevator shaft, another beam of light spilled out into the darkened room. For a moment it splashed across the memorial wall, casting shadows and throwing the sombre lettering into sharp relief. The armoured bulk of James Vega pulled himself into view around the shaft. Given his bulk, the marine was surprisingly agile. Once more the turian was surprised by the smoothness of Vega's motion. The man clearly knew his zero-g drill. Garrus supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Like all of Shepard's former crew, Vega had proved himself competent on many occasions.  
Vega's helmet turned in Garrus's direction. He squinted for a moment as the lamp-beam spilt into his eyes. ‘Hey,’ Vega said, ‘are you missing my eggs that much? Shit, man, you should have said!’  
Garrus realised he was close to the kitchen area. That would explain the abandoned mug, he supposed. ‘Oh, you needn't worry,’ he said. ‘Your eggs are great, especially on the way back up.’  
The eggs had become a running joke. The morning after that last party on the Citadel, tired and hung over, Garrus had accidentally grabbed a plateful of eggs from the wrong pan. In fairness, he had to acknowledge that James's eggs did taste rather good, but the turian could have passed on the resultant vomiting episode.  
Turning serious for a moment, Garrus asked, ‘Did you find anyone downstairs?’  
‘No,’James said.  
‘Okay. I've searched the bridge and the CIC, and there's no-one here.’  
‘So we're done?’ James said. ‘The old girl's actually empty?’  
‘Looks that way,’ Garrus said. ‘Though I doubt EDI would appreciate being called old.’  
Vega sighed and shook his head. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I miss her. And Shepard. Can't believe we've lost both of them. It’s fucked up.’  
For a moment Garrus was tempted to reply with a dry quip. But he checked himself. Here in the cold, dark confines of the crew deck, it didn't feel appropriate. Like committing sacrilege inside a tomb.  
Instead, he just said, ‘No. It isn't.’  
James looked back at the elevator. ‘I guess there's one place left to go,’ he said. ‘Shepard's cabin.’  
Garrus nodded. He swung his feet toward the decking. As his bootsoles moved within a few centimetres of the surface, the magnets locked onto the ferrous strips in the decking. He actually heard the clang, conducted up through his bones and his suit, as his feet connected again with solid matter.  
Walking in zero g was awkward, but Garrus had plenty of experience. A few moments later he joined James near the elevator shaft. ‘Let's go,’ he said.  
They made their way to the shaft.  
As they crawled up its inside, Garrus reflected that all considered, they’d been lucky. Things could be much worse. When the relay corridor had collapsed around them, the _Normandy_ had been badly damaged. EDI had gone offline, knocked out by some sort of weird power surge in her bluebox. Most of the ship's VIs had suffered similar instabilities, although they at least could be rebooted.  
There had been no such good fortune for EDI. The box itself had been physically-fried. Garrus had been there when Joker had come in to see it. The helmsman hadn’t even said anything. He had just taken one look at it, with its half-melted circuits and that gentle curl of smoke, shaken his head and walked back out again. The look in his eyes was something Garrus knew he wouldn’t forget for a long time.  
In the end the crew had managed to improvise a patchwork of repairs, enough to get life support and the FTL drive back online. By good fortune, it turned out that they were only a week's travel out from Charon. That had proved to be a minor miracle. With a damaged ship, unreliable VIs and no central AI to manage the systems, the _Normandy_ 's condition had quickly degraded. By the time the ship dropped out of FTL, just inside the orbit of Saturn, the central reactor was showing thermal spikes. Expecting an imminent containment failure, the crew had made the decision shut everything down and abandon ship. They had been less than a billion kilometres from the Earth – nothing, in interstellar terms – but it was a billion kilometres too far. Add a metre here and a metre there and you could soon find yourself into real distances, Garrus supposed.  
Right at this moment an Alliance cruiser, the _Indigo_ , was sat about a mile off their bow. It was waiting to collect the last stragglers. Once they were done here, Garrus and James would go to the main bay and take the final shuttle out of the ship. And that would be the end of the _Normandy_ ’s journey, for all that the vessel’s hulk was still here.  
The spirit of the ship would be gone.  
The pair reached the landing outside the cabin. Like everywhere, it was dark and silent. ‘What do you think will happen?’ James asked. ‘To the ship, I mean. The _Normandy_.’  
Garrus shrugged. His mandibles moved inside his helmet, although he knew James couldn't see the gesture. ‘Not for me to know,’ he said. ‘I guess she'll just orbit Sol. Probably someone will tow her into port eventually. Make her into a museum. Maybe with a gift shop.’  
James snorted. ‘There are a lot of memories on this ship,’ he said.  
‘Yes,’ Garrus said. His played his lamp across the door in front of him.  
The landing was stark and lifeless. A gentle patina of frost had formed on some of the surfaces, where the water vapour had been condensed out of the failing air. The traceries of ice glittered with chill sparkles under Garrus’s light.  
Garrus paused for a moment, lamp-beam aimed straight in front of him. With two of them stood here, the small landing area felt claustrophobic. They were almost shoulder to shoulder. In front of them there was the door to the captain’s cabin, locked and shut. No holographic signs glowed over the dull metal.  
‘How do we get this open?’ James asked, appearing next to the turian.  
‘The old fashioned way, of course,’ Garrus said. He moved his hands over the metal, looking for a certain slot. ‘Here we are.’ Hooking a talon under the edge of the flap, he pulled it up. There was an emergency handle.  
‘When was the last time that was used?’ James asked.  
‘No idea,’ Garrus said. Planting his bootsoles as firmly as he could on the floor, he grabbed hold of the handle. Hoping that the magnetics would hold, he pulled back on the handle.  
Nothing happened.  
Garrus grunted. James was watching. What Garrus could see of his face looked rather sceptical. ‘Let me try.’  
‘Sure, if you think you can do any better.’  
Garrus stepped back. The human marine took hold of the handle, and pulled on it. This time there was movement. Garrus actually felt the grinding of the mechanism through the floor. There was, of course, no sound.  
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I guess that hasn’t been oiled in some time.’  
‘Yeah, maybe someone was too busy calibrating.’  
‘Oh, low blow Mr Vega, low blow!’  
Vega cocked his head on one side. ‘You sounded a bit like Esteban just then.’  
Garrus considered that. ‘I suppose I did,’ he acknowledged. ‘Evidently a bad influence. Anyway, shall we check the cabin?’  
‘Yeah,’ James said. ‘No point putting this off any longer, I guess.’ He sounded unsure. Garrus felt much the same. They knew the room would be completely empty, but procedures were procedures. The whole ship had to be manually-searched.  
Also, going into this room would be a bit like admitting Shepard was gone.  
Garrus shook his head. Time to focus. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.  
Together, they pushed the doors apart. The door opened onto a larger space.  
Helmet beams swept over the interior. The cabin was much as it had been. The air loss from the ship had been slow. The problem had been the shuttle bay. Usually when it was open, its air was held in with a mass field, but with the reactor offline, the field was down too. The power draw was far too high to run it off the batteries. As the ship needed evacuating, the only practical option had been to suit everybody up and then prop open the doors. They couldn’t use the main airlock – it too was unpowered and locked shut, and anyway the _Indigo_ ’s docking tube had been badly damaged during the Battle of Earth. There was no realistic likelihood of another ship being able to meet them. Apparently most available vessels were busy ferrying the couple of hundred thousand or so survivors down from the Citadel’s wreck to Earth.  
The only workable option was using the shuttles in the bay. Getting the doors to open had been quite a pain. They’d had to manually wire some of the remaining batteries into the mechanism, then put them on a timer so everyone had a chance to clear the bay first, before the doors creaked open.  
There hadn’t been any dramatic winds or howling gales. The crew had deliberately made the opening quite small. No-one needed a hurricane! There had been a strong breeze in the bay itself, while the air slid away. But this far up in the structure, the decompression had been slow and gentle. It had been nearly ten hours since the doors opened. A few papers had scattered onto the floor, but other than that nothing had been disturbed.  
‘Wow,’ James said. ‘It’s like she could just … come back, you know?’  
Garrus nodded. Seeing the room like this, dark and empty, was weird. ‘Complete with dead fish,’ he said, pointing at the tank.  
Sure enough, several lifeless shapes drifted through the water. Sealed behind its panes, the tank was still pressurised, but the fish had succumbed to the deepening cold. The readout on Garrus’s HUD told him that the temperature was down to minus seventeen degrees. The air pressure, insofar as there was any air left, was a negligible zero point zero three millibars.  
Cold enough to freeze your blood, and empty enough to make it boil. Morbidly, Garrus wondered what would happen first if his armour sprung a leak. He supposed it would depend on just how big the hole was.  
‘Well,’ Garrus said, ‘I can’t see anyone – James? What are you doing?’  
The marine had walked over to Shepard’s desk. He was stood beside the model ships cabinet, looking down at the lifeless shape of her old console. The beam from his lamp played over the still surface.  
He dropped to one knee.  
‘What are you doing?’ Garrus repeated. He felt his mandibles flex inside his helmet. Just what was the human up to?  
‘This drawer,’ James said. ‘It’s ajar.’  
Garrus felt a stir of curiosity. ‘Ajar?’ That didn’t seem like Shepard. The commander had always been neat and well-organised. Perhaps the drawer had been knocked open when the _Normandy_ had been shaken out of the relay corridor? It had been rather bumpy. Or there was also the crash itself, Garrus supposed. Neither had been gentle experiences.  
‘No,’ James added, ‘it’s been jammed open. With some paper.’  
Now that was strange. Garrus watched as Vega pulled the little roll out.  
‘Does it … say anything?’ he asked. He was developing an odd feeling. Being in this room felt weirdly like a trespass, like they’d gone somewhere they shouldn’t. The captain’s cabin felt sepulchral. This seemed close to grave robbing.  
‘It does,’ James said. ‘Shit. It says, “See in here”.’ His helmet looked up. Garrus saw his own reflection in James’s visor, complete with the glare of his headlamp. ‘Garrus, it’s her handwriting.’  
‘Let me see,’ the turian said. He didn’t have to ask whom ‘her’ referred to. Hardly able to believe it, he grabbed at the piece of paper.  
Holding it up to his light, he saw that James was correct.  
‘She wants – wanted – us to look,’ James said. His voice caught for a moment.  
A sudden intuition came to Garrus. It wasn’t the sort of thought he usually had. He was more at home with talk of sniper rifles and weapon modifications. People stuff always left uneasy. He didn’t like to admit it but sometimes the emotional stuff left him flustered, or reminded of things he’d rather not think about. Still, this particular notion had the ring of truth.  
‘The commander,’ he said. ‘You had feelings for her, didn’t you?’  
For a moment James raised his hands, as if to ward off the comment. Then they dropped and his shoulders slumped. His head-lamp pointed downwards, casting a clear white pool of light onto the decking beneath their feet. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I never acted on – I never would have! I didn’t want to put her in a difficult position, you know?’  
Garrus nodded. He was glad that James couldn’t see the expression his mandibles were making. ‘I do know,’ he said.  
James twitched. He sounded very surprised. ‘What … really?’  
‘She was an imposing figure,’ Garrus said. ‘Larger than love, I think your people say?’  
‘Larger than life,’ James corrected. Then he laughed ruefully. ‘But that sort of woks too, doesn’t it?’  
‘I never did anything about it,’ Garrus said. ‘But that time on Omega, after we all thought she was gone? That was hard.’  
‘You knew her before,’ James acknowledged. ‘I knew her by reputation. She did so much for all of us! And then came Fehl Prime and I thought that was it. Then I found myself here – serving under Shepard herself!’ He sounded part-confused and part-awestruck.  
‘What do you do when you’re in the shadow of a hero?’ Garrus agreed.  
‘You try to act the part, I guess,’ James said. ‘You know you’re a fake. But from a distance a good fake looks okay, right?’  
Suddenly moved, Garrus reached out and put a hand on the marine’s armoured shoulder. ‘You did all right, as far as I’m concerned.’  
‘Shit, man, that means a lot coming from you.’ James almost sounded like he was blinking back tears. Garrus couldn’t quite imagine that. He supposed he must have misread the alien’s tone of voice. Human intonation was still a bit tricky sometimes, even with several years of experience.  
Misread intonation. Yes, that must be it. Obviously that was what he had heard. Time to change the subject before he embarrassed himself any further.  
‘Let’s see what she left,’ Garrus said, withdrawing his hand. He pointed at the drawer. ‘She clearly wanted it found.’  
They opened the drawer. Sat inside it was a single hardbound book. The cover was blank. Garrus picked it up. It was made of red hardboard, with leaves of a thick-looking paper.  
He opened it at random.  
‘Shit,’ James said. ‘It’s a – she had a sketchbook?’  
The pages were watercolour paper. As Garrus flipped through them, he saw that each page was dense with figure sketches and portraits, sketched out in slightly-smudged pencil.  
Wordlessly, he handed the volume to James.  
‘She was an artist,’ James said, as he looked through the book. ‘And we never knew. We never knew.’  
‘She was private,’ Garrus said, quietly. ‘She was good at getting others to open up. But she rarely talked about herself. Hell, it was three months before I knew her first name! I just thought she was Shepard for so long.’  
‘Mindoir,’ James said.  
‘Mindoir,’ Garrus agreed. One thing he did know was that the ruined colony had set a deep impression into their former commander.  
‘Do you think Liara knew about this?’ James asked.  
‘They melded a few times, when we were hunting Saren,’ Garrus said. ‘So I guess she at least suspected. But she would never break a confidence. Not like that.’  
‘Yeah, true,’ James agreed. ‘Doc looks out for her friends, doesn’t she?’ He paused, then added, ‘What about that Miranda? She put Shepard back together again. Must’ve got some something out of that.’  
‘You met her, didn’t you?’ Garrus said.  
James nodded. ‘You know her better than I do. But I was there on Horizon. And the party, of course.’  
‘Yes, there’s always the party.’ Garrus shrugged. ‘But as for whether she knew? Not necessarily.’  
James said, ‘Someone must have.’  
‘I don’t know. In fact, I wonder if this is new? Post-Lazarus, I mean.’  
‘What, come back from the dead and take up doodling?’  
‘Hardly. More you’ve had a life-changing experience and you need to express yourself. Maybe she felt she might jeopardise her command if she talked to us – so she did this instead?’  
‘I guess that’s possible,’ James agreed.  
Garrus peered over at the sketchbook again. ‘She’s actually quite good,’ he said. ‘Wonder where she got the time to practise?’  
‘Suppose we’ll never know,’ James said.  
‘Well look at this. I think I recognise some of these people!’  
‘Yeah, that’s obviously Sparks,’ James said. Garrus had to agree. Tali’s figure was unmistakeable. ‘And - wait, is that Chakwas?’  
Garrus blinked. It was indeed. Dr. Chakwas, sat at her desk, her back three-quarters turned to the line of sight. ‘I suddenly have this image,’ he said, ‘of Shepard just stood there with a pad, doodling. “Don’t mind me, carry on!” ’  
‘If anyone could have done that,’ James said, ‘it’s Shepard.’  
Garrus flipped through a few more of the pages. ‘Oh,’ he said.  
‘What?’ James asked.  
‘You might possibly recognise someone here.’ He handed James the sketchbook.  
The marine’s helmet beam turned down to the page. There was a long moment of silence. Then he said, ‘Shit. That’s … that’s me, isn’t it?’  
‘Apparently you made an impression on someone.’  
James stood there for what seemed like a long time, holding the book. Finally he glanced up. Garrus saw his own reflection in the man’s visor, bent and smeared across the curved surface. James asked, ‘What do you think happened to her?’  
‘You were with her up to the beam,’ Garrus said. ‘I wasn’t.’  
‘Yeah, me and EDI,’ James said.  
‘But you’re here to speak for yourself. EDI … isn’t.’ Garrus glanced around the still, cold room. Above them, geometric patterns of frost had formed across the inner surface of the skylight. The remaining whisper of air was not enough to support any moisture and water had settled out onto the ice-cold plastic. Beyond the crystalline patterns, cold stars gleamed with the bright and clear sharpness of outer space.  
James said nothing for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘I didn’t see her after the beam,’ he said. ‘But – well, we’re still alive, you know? So whatever she did, it must have worked.’  
‘Before the QEC went down,’ Garrus said, ‘Hackett said no-one had found a body. There’s still some hope.’  
James shook his head. ‘I’d like to believe that,’ he said. ‘But no point setting ourselves up for disappointment, is there?’  
There was, Garrus had to acknowledge, a bitter sort of wisdom in that view.  
‘I wonder if she knew,’ James said. ‘That’s why she picked us, maybe? She was saying goodbye.’  
‘Is that what you’d like to think?’ Garrus asked him.  
James shrugged. ‘I know what I’d like to think. I don’t know if it’s the truth.’  
The turian was still holding the scrap of paper. ‘Then perhaps you should see this.’ He turned it over. On the back, in simple, clear handwriting, it said _GIVE THIS TO JAMES_. Wordlessly, he passed it over.  
James took it in his other hand. For what seemed an age, he just stared at it. Finally, he said, ‘Shit. She wanted me to have the sketchbook?’  
Garrus nodded. ‘I guess we better get going,’ he said. ‘We’ve found everything that we needed to see.’  
‘Yeah,’ James said. ‘I guess we have.’  



End file.
